Made-for-TV Horror Movies Evoke a Delightful Pre-Streaming Past

by Simon Abrams

Oct. 18, 2018UPDATED Oct. 19, 2018

For anyone who came of age before the advent of streaming, the made-for-TV horror movie was once a low-budget, often camp, and sometimes genuinely horrifying treat this time of year. Original, self-contained and surprisingly high-concept, these stories were never quite a prime-time staple. But the makers of atmospheric chillers from the Golden Age like “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” (1973) and “Dark Night of the Scarecrow” (1981) usually had a pretty high bar to clear: Appeal to a general audience, do it cheap, and leave time for commercials.

What resulted were sometimes bad, sometimes good-bad, and frequently great regardless, packed with snappy dialogue and daring ideas (not to mention cheap special effects). Many of these movies are hard to find today, but a handful of greats are streaming. These are the 10 we like best.

Barbara Rush in “Moon of the Wolf.”Filmways/ABC

‘Moon of the Wolf’

Most made-for-TV creature features — including the homoerotic 1974 werewolf pic “Scream of the Wolf,” which pits a mild-mannered author against a deranged big game hunter — don’t deliver enough monster footage. In “Moon of the Wolf,” the director Daniel Petrie and screenwriter Alvin Sapinsley (eventually) spring a Lon Chaney Jr.-like werewolf on a manly Louisiana sheriff (David Janssen), albeit a werewolf who, unlike the sheriff, likes to button up his collared shirt. (Jannsen’s prominently displayed chest hair is practically a supporting character.) Until the lupine star is released, viewers are treated to a sudsy procedural that revolves around Ellie (who is never seen on-camera) and her unborn child, the werewolf’s first victims. The sheriff’s search for the father of Ellie’s unborn child almost overshadows his search for a killer werewolf — but only almost. Come for the cheesy monster makeup, stay for Jannsen’s perplexing button malfunction.

Michael Bryant in “The Stone Tape.”

BBC

‘The Stone Tape’

Originally aired: Dec. 25, 1972, on BBC Two; rent or buy it on Amazon.

This creepy ghost story — written by the British sci-fi writer Nigel Kneale (“Beasts,” “The Quatermass Xperiment”) and directed by Peter Sasdy — suggests that modern technology is useless in the hands of scientists who allow their research to be co-opted by their own careerism. Jill, a sensitive computer programmer (Jane Asher), begs her exclusively male colleagues — led by Michael Bryant’s smarmy scientist, Peter — to stop futzing with their newfangled gadgets and pay closer attention to the ghost of a screaming chambermaid who haunts Taskerlands Manor, their research group’s haunted headquarters. Kneale’s credible scenario and dialogue handily compensate for the film’s meager special effects — mostly colored strobes, but also some rough green-screen optical effects.

Karen Black in “Trilogy of Terror.”ABC

‘Trilogy of Terror’

Karen Black stars as three unstable women who either discover or reveal themselves to be their own worst enemies in this disturbing horror omnibus. First Black plays Julie, a college professor who (despite her misleading initial appearance) preys on men. Then she returns as Millicent, a seemingly prudish shut-in who isn’t who she seems. Finally, Black (as neurotic urbanite Amelia) rejects her mother’s hectoring and embraces the monster within — but only after clashing with a sentient Zuni fetish doll. The writer Richard Matheson and director Dan Curtis collaborated on a handful of other decent made-for-TV horror films, including “The Night Stalker” (1972) and “Dead of Night” (1977). But Black’s versatile performance puts “Trilogy of Terror” way over the top.

Susan Myers in “The Spell.”

NBC

‘The Spell’

This low-budget, “Carrie”-like tale of witchcraft and teenage hormones stars Lee Grant as Marilyn, a concerned mother who discovers that her socially maladjusted teen daughter Rita (Susan Myers) has somehow cast magic hexes on everybody she hates, including her snotty sister Kristina (Helen Hunt). Marilyn’s search for answers is consistently entertaining, even if it takes her a while to accept that Rita is responsible for several glaring “accidents,” like Kristina’s near-fatal drowning during a high-stakes swimming competition. Still, “The Spell” is worth seeing if only for its logic-defying twist and the most brutal mother-to-daughter exchange in any horror film: “I will destroy you.”

Reggie Nalder in “Salem’s Lot.”

Warner Bros./CBS

‘Salem’s Lot’

The director Tobe Hooper (“The Texas Chain Saw Massacre”) and the screenwriter Paul Monash skillfully pare down the 653-page source novel from Stephen King, which follows the residents of a small Maine town as they fight off a centuries-old vampire. Hooper and Monash also give each protagonist at least one great scene, like when the square-jawed author Ben Mears (David Soul) struggles to remember the Lord’s Prayer right before a newly-undead vampire pounces on him. The success of “Salem’s Lot” as an ensemble drama is especially striking since James Mason, playing a snooty human antagonist, steals almost every scene he’s in. Hooper and Monash also do a fine job dramatizing the novel’s moodiest scare scenes, especially when the grade school vampires Danny and Ralphie Glick (Brad Savage and Ralphie Scribner) float outside their victims’ bedroom windows and silently hypnotize viewers with crooked fangs and glow-in-the-dark contact lenses.

A scene from “Threads.”

BBC

‘Threads’

Originally aired: Sept. 23, 1984, on BBC; stream it on Shudder; rent or buy it on Amazon.

This harrowing British drama about life during and after a global thermonuclear war is inarguably the scariest film on the list. Viewers follow a family of Sheffield survivors and their neighbors as they struggle to find food, shelter and water while unprepared local politicians hoard the community’s modest resources. As if the ever-rising body count weren’t terrifying enough, the director Mick Jackson and screenwriter Barry Hines slowly parcel out basic contextual details using ominous interstitial titles and voice-over, including the mysterious observation that “in these early [post-explosion stages], the symptoms of radiation sickness and the symptoms of panic are identical.” The last remaining survivors struggle to stay alive as technology stops working, their food supply dwindles, and a variety of diseases (including Typhoid and dysentery) deplete their ranks.

David Warner and Alexandra Powers in “Cast a Deadly Spell.”

HBO

‘Cast a Deadly Spell’

The director Martin Campbell (“Casino Royale,” “Vertical Limit”) and screenwriter Joseph Dougherty wisely focus on the noirish elements of this “Big Sleep”-style horror-mystery hybrid. The year is 1948, the place Los Angeles, and everybody but the private eye Harry Philip Lovecraft (Fred Ward) — who is hired by a mysterious book collector (David Warner) to retrieve a stolen copy of the Necronomicon — practices magic. Campbell and Dougherty apply a light touch to the film’s horror conventions — including gremlins, zombies and gargoyles — right up until Hackshaw summons the Elder God Cthulhu. Dougherty continues Lovecraft’s adventures in “Witch Hunt,” a worthwhile 1994 sequel — directed by Paul Schrader and starring Dennis Hopper as Lovecraft — that revolves around McCarthyist trials involving literal witches.

‘Ghostwatch’

When it first aired, this spooky mockumentary about a tabloid journalism-style investigation into the haunting of a London family panicked some BBC viewers, who believed it was a real live broadcast. But with its convincing acting and special effects, the film still has the power to unnerve viewers who know better now. Even the most jaded horror fans will find themselves drawn in as the genial host Michael Parkinson (playing himself) poses and fields questions from a skeptical on-the-spot TV reporter named Sarah Greene (herself) and fictional callers, almost all of whom report the same story: a mysterious figure named Pipes is haunting the young Early sisters, Suzanne and Kim (the real-life siblings Michelle and Cherise Wesson). And the more attention that Pipes gets, the stronger he becomes. Don’t watch this one alone.

Ray Winstone in “Sweeney Todd.”

Box TV/BBC

‘Sweeney Todd’

This appropriately lurid adaptation of “The String of Pearls” — the 19th century penny dreadful serial that introduced the murderous Sweeney Todd — doesn’t offer musical numbers. But it does offer two chilling lead performances, from Ray Winstone as the sexually impotent and psychologically withdrawn Todd, and from Essie Davis as Mrs. Lovett, who cooks Todd’s victims into meat pies. Davis is riveting as the unhappily married Lovett, who believes that God is punishing her for cheating on her husband. And Winstone brings extra weight to every snarl and pout as he slits throats and performs Victorian-era surgery on supporting characters (like a hapless lawman played by Tom Hardy). Stephen Sondheim’s musical may rightfully be the most famous version of Todd’s story, but Winstone’s and Davis’s commanding performances make this BBC adaptation a strong version.

A scene from “The Baby’s Room.”

Estudios Picasso

‘The Baby’s Room’

The first half of this darkly funny ghost story from the Spanish writer-director Álex de la Iglesia plays out like a domestic farce. In it, a self-absorbed journalist named Juan (Javier Gutiérrez) struggles to balance writing assignments, parental responsibilities and his frustrated libido while his concerned wife, Sonia (Leonor Watling), grows increasingly impatient. But Juan’s life soon takes an eerie turn when he spots a mysterious black figure hovering over his newborn son’s crib. The intruder returns every night, but Juan can only spot him on his son’s infrared baby monitor. But is the intruder a ghost, a doppelgänger or a figment of Juan’s imagination? The imaginative plot by de la Iglesia and his co-writer, Jorge Guerricaechevarría, will keep you guessing until the end.